The wind in Chicago doesn’t just blow; it cuts. It slices right through the cashmere of a five-thousand-dollar coat like it’s paper.
I stood outside the Civic Opera House, checking my Patek Philippe, ignoring the valet scrambling to bring my Phantom around. I hated these galas. I hated the fake smiles, the lukewarm champagne, and the way people looked at me—Julian Thorne, the tech mogul, the man who turned code into an empire. They saw a walking ATM. They didn’t see a person.
I just wanted to go home to my empty glass penthouse on the Gold Coast, pour a twenty-year-old scotch, and stare at the skyline until I passed out.
Then, I heard it.
At first, I thought it was the wind whistling through the scaffolding across the street. But the pitch was too perfect. Too human.
“Sleep, little ember, the fire is low… The wolves are waiting, but you have to grow…”
My heart stopped. My breath hitched in my throat, freezing in the air.
That wasn’t a pop song on the radio. That wasn’t a lullaby you found in a library book.
That was my song.
I wrote those lyrics on a grease-stained napkin in a dive bar in Seattle thirty years ago. I composed the melody on a cracked acoustic guitar I sold the next day to pay for a Greyhound bus ticket. I never recorded it. I never performed it. I never sang it to a soul except…
Except her.
I pushed past my security detail, my movements sudden and erratic.
“Mr. Thorne, the car is—”
“Quiet,” I snapped, stumbling toward the dark alleyway beside the theater.
The singing grew louder, trembling against the roar of the city traffic. It wasn’t a woman’s voice. It was a child’s.
I rounded the corner, my patent leather shoes crunching on dirty, gray snow.
She was standing there, wrapped in a coat three sizes too big, the wool matted and stained with city grease. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Her hair was a tangled mess of dirty blonde, hidden under a frayed knit cap. She had a soggy cardboard cup at her feet, empty except for a few pennies.
She was shivering so violently that her voice wavered, creating a natural, haunting vibrato that tore my chest open.
“Close your eyes, don’t let them see… The king is lonely, but the wild is free…”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I grabbed the rough brick wall to steady myself.
She shouldn’t know that verse. Nobody should know that verse.
“Hey,” I croaked out. My voice, usually commanding boardrooms of hundreds, was barely a whisper.
The singing stopped abruptly.
The girl’s head snapped up.
And that’s when the second shock wave hit me.
It wasn’t just the song. It was the eyes. One was a deep, chocolate brown. The other was a startling, icy blue. Heterochromia.
I only knew one other person with eyes like that. And I buried her memory three decades ago when I chose ambition over love.
Chapter 2: The Impossible Echo
The girl took a step back, clutching the oversized coat tighter around her small frame. She looked at me like I was a predator. In her world, a man in a tuxedo standing in a dark alley usually meant trouble.
“I don’t have change,” she stammered, her breath puffing out in white clouds. “I didn’t steal anything. I swear.”
I stepped into the dim light of the streetlamp, hands raised. “I’m not the police. I’m not… I’m not going to hurt you.”
I took a breath, trying to slow my racing heart. “That song. The one you were just singing.”
She looked down at her boots—worn out, held together with silver duct tape. “It’s just a song. Please, mister. I’m leaving.”
“No,” I said, too quickly, too loudly. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my platinum money clip. I didn’t count it. There must have been two grand in cash there. I held it out, my hand shaking.
Her eyes went wide, darting from the cash to my face.
“I just want to know where you heard it,” I pleaded. “Please. It’s important.”
She hesitated, licking her chapped lips. The hunger won out. She snatched the money, stuffing it deep into her pocket, but she didn’t run. She stayed, wary, like a cornered stray cat.
“My mom,” she said quietly. “She used to sing it to me when the heaters got turned off. She said it was magic. Said it would keep the cold away.”
The ground seemed to tilt beneath me. “Your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“What… what’s your mom’s name?” I asked, dread and hope warring in my stomach like acid.
“Sarah,” the girl whispered. “Sarah Miller.”
The name hit me like a physical blow. Sarah. The waitress. The artist. The girl who told me that money would ruin my soul, right before I left her to chase my first million in Silicon Valley.
“Where is she?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Where is Sarah?”
The girl’s face crumbled. The toughness evaporated, leaving just a scared, lonely child. She wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“She died,” the girl choked out. “Last winter. It was the pneumonia. She… she coughed so much, and we didn’t have money for the doctor.”
I felt the tears prick my eyes, hot and sudden. “And you? Who takes care of you?”
She shrugged, a gesture so heavy it looked like it hurt her shoulders. “I’m in the system. Foster home on 5th. But I hate it there. Mr. Henderson locks the fridge at night. So I come out here. I sing her song. Sometimes people give me a dollar.”
She looked up at me, those mismatched eyes piercing right through my soul. “Why do you care? It’s just a stupid song.”
I fell to my knees in the slush, ruining my pants, not caring a damn bit. I looked her dead in the eye.
“It’s not just a song,” I whispered. “I wrote it.”
The girl froze. “You’re lying. My mom said… she said my dad wrote it. She said he was a prince who got lost in a castle of gold.”
She stepped closer, scrutinizing my face.
“She said he’d come back when the song was finished.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“What’s your name?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I knew it in my bones.
“Lily,” she said. “My name is Lily.”
Lily. The name of the flower Sarah held in her hair the night we met.
I wasn’t just looking at a homeless child.
I was looking at my daughter.
Chapter 3: The Collision of Worlds
“Sir!”
The sharp voice of Marcus, my head of security, shattered the moment. I blinked, the tears freezing on my cheeks, and looked up. Marcus was charging down the alleyway, hand hovering near his holster, his earpiece blinking.
Lily gasped and scrambled back, tripping over her own oversized boots. She hit the icy pavement hard.
“No!” I shouted, scrambling up from my knees. I threw my arm out, blocking Marcus. “Stand down, Marcus! Stand down!”
“Sir, you’ve been gone five minutes, we thought—” Marcus stopped, his eyes darting from my ruined tuxedo to the terrified, dirty child sprawled in the snow. “Is this individual bothering you, Mr. Thorne?”
“Individual?” I let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “She’s a child, Marcus. Look at her.”
Lily was scrambling backward on her hands and heels, her eyes wide with terror. She looked at Marcus, then at me, and I saw the calculation happening in her mind. Run.
“Wait, Lily,” I said, stepping forward, palms open. “Don’t run. Please.”
“You have guards,” she accused, her voice high and thin. “You’re one of them. The bad ones.”
“No,” I shook my head vigorously. “I’m just… I’m just a man who knew your mother. And I can’t leave you here in the cold.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. Her teeth were chattering so hard I could hear them clicking together. “I have the money you gave me. I can buy hot chocolate.”
“Lily, it’s five degrees out here,” I said, desperation creeping into my tone. “Where are you going to sleep? Under the bridge? In the station?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
I looked at the Phantom parked at the curb, its engine purring, exhaust curling into the night air like white smoke. Then I looked at her red, raw hands.
“I have a warm car,” I said softly. “And I have food. Real food. Not just hot chocolate. Whatever you want. Burgers, pizza, steak… anything.”
Hunger is a powerful motivator. I saw her stomach contract.
“I don’t get in cars with strangers,” she said, quoting a rule that had probably kept her alive this long.
“You’re right. You shouldn’t,” I agreed. I reached into my tuxedo jacket pocket—slowly—and pulled out my wallet. I extracted my ID card. “My name is Julian Thorne. You can hold this. If I try anything, you scream, and Marcus here will… well, Marcus works for me, but he’s an ex-cop. He won’t let a kid get hurt. Right, Marcus?”
I shot Marcus a look that said, Play along or you’re fired.
Marcus, bless him, softened his posture. “That’s right, miss. I’m watching him.”
Lily hesitated. She looked at the ID, then at the warm, glowing interior of the car visible through the open door.
“Just for food?” she asked.
“Just for food,” I promised. “And then… then we can figure out the rest.”
She stood up, brushing the snow off her coat. She walked past me, head high despite her fear, retaining a shred of dignity that reminded me so much of Sarah it hurt.
As she slid into the backseat of the Rolls-Royce, her filthy boots sinking into the lamb’s wool floor mats, I saw the collision of my two lives. The pristine, sterile wealth I had built to protect myself, and the messy, painful, beautiful reality I had left behind.
I climbed in next to her, leaving a respectful distance.
“Where to, Mr. Thorne?” the driver asked, eyes wide in the rearview mirror.
I looked at Lily, who was already eyeing the mini-fridge.
“Home,” I said. “Take us home.”
As the car pulled away, I realized I wasn’t just taking a stranger out of the cold. I was bringing a bomb into my glass castle, and when it exploded, it was going to destroy everything I thought I knew about myself.
Chapter 4: The Glass Cage
The elevator ride to the 90th floor usually took forty seconds. Tonight, it felt like a lifetime.
Lily stood in the corner of the mahogany-paneled car, pressing herself against the railing as if the very air around us was expensive and breakable. The LED display ticked upward—50, 60, 70—and with every floor, I saw her eyes widen. She was ascending into a world she had only seen on billboards, a world that had rejected her mother.
When the doors slid open directly into my penthouse, the silence was deafening.
My home was a masterpiece of modern architecture. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls overlooking Lake Michigan, white marble floors that gleamed like ice, and minimalist furniture that cost more than most houses. It was breathtaking.
It was also completely soul-dead.
Lily hesitated at the threshold. She looked down at her boots, caked with gray slush and street grime, then at the pristine white floor.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m gonna dirty it.”
That simple sentence broke me. It wasn’t just about the floor; it was an ingrained apology for her existence.
“It’s just stone, Lily,” I said, my voice thick. “It washes. Come in.”
She took a tentative step. A dark, wet footprint stamped onto the marble. She winced.
“Marcus,” I barked without looking back. “Order food. Everything. Burgers from Au Cheval, deep dish from Lou’s, pasta, steak. I don’t care. Just get it here now.”
“Sir, it’s 11:00 PM,” Marcus noted, though he was already tapping his phone.
“I said now.”
I guided Lily to the sprawling living room. She sat on the edge of the Italian leather sofa, perched as if she expected to be yelled at any second. I poured a glass of water from the crystal pitcher and handed it to her. Her hands—small, red, and rough like sandpaper—shook as she took it.
“Is this real?” she asked, looking at the skyline glittering outside. “The lights?”
“It’s real,” I said, sitting on the coffee table opposite her so I wouldn’t tower over her. “Lily, I need to ask you… how long have you been at the foster home?”
She took a long gulp of water, draining the glass in seconds. “Six months. Since Mom… since the funeral.”
“And before that?”
“We moved around,” she said, her voice monotone, reciting a trauma she had normalized. “Mom waited tables. Then she got sick. We lost the apartment in Pilsen. We stayed in the shelter for a bit, but Mom said it was dangerous. So we stayed in the van. Then the van got towed.”
She looked at me, her mismatched eyes devoid of judgment, just stating facts.
“She sold her paintings to buy me a winter coat,” Lily added softly. “She said the cold can’t get you if you have good wool.”
I looked at the coat she was wearing. It was an army surplus jacket, moth-eaten and stained. It wasn’t the coat Sarah had bought.
“Where is that coat, Lily?”
She looked away. “Mr. Henderson took it. He said it was too nice for a runaway. He gave it to his daughter.”
Rage, white-hot and blinding, flared in my chest. I wanted to burn the city down. I wanted to find this Henderson and dismantle his life brick by brick. But I couldn’t terrify her. I forced my hands to unclench.
“You’re safe here,” I said, though the words felt hollow. “Nobody takes anything from you here.”
The food arrived twenty minutes later—a feast fit for a king, laid out on the dining table. The smell of grease, cheese, and roasted meat filled the sterile air.
Lily ate with a desperation that was painful to watch. She didn’t pace herself; she shoveled fries and pizza into her mouth as if the plate might be snatched away. I sat there, not eating, just drinking my scotch, watching the daughter I never knew I had survive on the calories I could have provided a million times over.
“Slow down,” I murmured gently. “You’ll get sick.”
She paused, a smear of tomato sauce on her cheek. She looked at the unfinished slice of pizza in her hand, then at me.
“Are you really him?” she asked suddenly.
The room went still.
“Who?”
“The Prince,” she said. “From the story. Mom said the Prince didn’t mean to leave. She said he got lost in the Castle of Gold and forgot the way out. She said he sang that song to call us, but the walls were too thick.”
She put the pizza down.
“She defended you,” Lily said, her voice hardening. “Even when she was coughing up blood, she said you were good. Are you?”
I looked at my reflection in the dark window—the tailored suit, the expensive haircut, the empty eyes.
“No,” I whispered. “I’m not the Prince, Lily. I’m the coward who built the castle.”
Chapter 5: The DNA of Memory
Lily didn’t accept my self-pity. She just stared at me, analyzing. She had Sarah’s emotional intelligence, that terrifying ability to see past the bullshit.
“Why?” she asked. One word. The heaviest word in the English language.
I stood up and walked to the grand piano in the corner of the room. It was a Steinway, kept perfectly tuned, though I hadn’t played it in five years. I ran my finger along the keys.
“We were young,” I began, my back to her. “We were starving artists in Seattle. I was coding on a laptop I stole from a university lab. Sarah was painting on discarded cardboard. We were happy. God, we were happy.”
I pressed a single key. A low C.
“But I was hungry for more than just food. I wanted to matter. I wanted to change the world. An investor offered me a seed round in Palo Alto. Five hundred thousand dollars. But I had to leave immediately. No baggage. No distractions.”
I turned to face her. Lily was standing now, watching me.
“Sarah was pregnant,” I said, the secret I had suppressed finally coming to light. “She told me the morning I got the offer. She was scared. She asked me to stay. She said we could make it work.”
“And you left,” Lily stated.
“I left,” I nodded, tears finally spilling over. “I told myself I’d send for her. I told myself I was doing it for us. But once I got there… the work consumed me. The money consumed me. Six months turned into a year. When I finally went back to find her, she was gone. The apartment was empty.”
“She waited,” Lily said, her voice trembling. “She waited for three years at that address.”
The revelation hit me like a sniper shot. Three years. While I was buying yachts and appearing on the cover of Forbes, Sarah was sitting in a damp apartment in Seattle, waiting for a man who chose binary code over her heartbeat.
“I didn’t know,” I choked out. “I thought she moved on.”
“She never moved on,” Lily said, walking toward the piano. She reached out and touched the ivory keys with her dirty fingers. “She taught me the song. She said, ‘If you ever meet him, sing this. It’s the only language he speaks.’“
“Play it,” she commanded.
“What?”
“Play the song. The real way.”
My hands were shaking, but I sat on the bench. I placed my fingers on the keys. Muscle memory is a strange thing; it bypasses the brain and goes straight to the soul.
I began to play. The melody was simple, haunting—a minor key progression that sounded like rain falling on a tin roof.
“Sleep, little ember, the fire is low…”
I sang the first line, my voice raspy.
“The wolves are waiting, but you have to grow…”
Lily’s voice joined mine. Pure, unrefined, and full of pain.
“Close your eyes, don’t let them see… The king is lonely, but the wild is free…”
We sang the chorus together in that penthouse high above the city. The acoustics of the room amplified our voices, blending the rough timbre of a broken man with the angelic soprano of a lost child.
For three minutes, there was no money, no poverty, no years of silence. There was just the music. It was the conversation we never had. It was the apology I could never articulate.
When the last note faded, Lily was crying. Not the silent, stoic tears of the street, but the heaving, messy sobs of a child who finally felt safe enough to break down.
I turned on the bench and did what I should have done ten years ago. I pulled her into my arms.
She stiffened for a second, then collapsed against my chest, burying her face in my expensive shirt, smelling of scotch and regret. She felt so small, so fragile. I held her tight, resting my chin on her dirty hat.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair. “I’m so, so sorry, Lily.”
“Don’t let me go back,” she sobbed. “Please don’t let me go back to Mr. Henderson.”
I pulled back, gripping her shoulders, looking into those blue-and-brown eyes.
“Over my dead body,” I swore. “You are never going back there. You’re home.”
But just as the promise left my lips, the elevator chimed.
Chapter 6: The Wolf at the Door
The peaceful atmosphere shattered instantly.
I stood up, putting Lily behind me instinctively. The elevator doors slid open, and the reality of the world I had ignored came crashing in.
It wasn’t food delivery.
Three police officers stepped out, hands resting on their belts. Behind them stood a man in a cheap windbreaker, his face red and sweating. He had thin lips and eyes that shifted nervously around the room, calculating the value of everything he saw.
“That’s her!” the man shouted, pointing a shaking finger at Lily. “That’s the runaway! Lily Miller!”
Lily let out a small whimper and grabbed the back of my jacket.
“Gentlemen,” I said, my voice dropping into the cold, authoritative tone I used to destroy competitors. “You are trespassing in a private residence. Who gave you access to this floor?”
“Mr. Thorne?” The lead officer, a sergeant with a tired face, stepped forward. He recognized me. Everyone in Chicago recognized me. He looked uncomfortable. “We received a call about a kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” I laughed, a sharp, humorless sound. “I found this child freezing to death in an alleyway. I gave her dinner.”
“He lured her!” the man in the windbreaker shouted. “I’m her legal guardian. I’m Rick Henderson. She ran away three days ago. She’s property of the state, and she’s under my care!”
Henderson.
I looked at the man. He looked exactly like the type of petty tyrant who would lock a fridge and steal a dead woman’s coat.
“She is not property,” I spat. “She is a human being.”
“She’s a minor,” the Sergeant said firmly. “Mr. Thorne, I appreciate you trying to help, but you can’t just take a child off the street. You have to go through the proper channels. We need to take her back.”
“No!” Lily screamed. She bolted from behind me, but not toward the door—away from it, backing toward the glass wall. “I won’t go! He hurts me! He locks me in the basement!”
The accusation hung in the air. The officers looked at Henderson.
“She’s a liar,” Henderson said quickly, wiping sweat from his upper lip. “She’s a troubled kid. Drugs, probably. Look at her, she’s delirious.”
“She is ten years old!” I roared. The fury that had been building inside me finally exploded. I stepped toward Henderson, and for a second, I thought I might kill him.
Marcus stepped out from the hallway, moving silently. He placed a hand on my chest. “Sir. Don’t.”
“Mr. Thorne,” the Sergeant warned, hand moving to his taser. “Step back. We are taking the girl.”
“She is my daughter,” I announced.
The room went silent again. Henderson’s jaw dropped. The Sergeant blinked.
“Sir?”
“I said, she is my daughter,” I repeated, my voice steady as steel. “I am her biological father. You are not taking her anywhere.”
“Do you have proof?” the Sergeant asked, skepticism written all over his face. “A birth certificate? A paternity test?”
I didn’t. I had nothing but a song and a pair of eyes.
“I can get it,” I said. “Give me twenty-four hours. My lawyers will—”
“I can’t do that, sir,” the Sergeant shook his head. “Without legal documentation, Mr. Henderson is her guardian. If you interfere, I will have to arrest you for custodial interference and kidnapping. And with your profile… that’s not going to look good.”
He moved toward Lily. “Come on, honey. Let’s go.”
Lily looked at me, panic wild in her eyes. “Julian! You promised!”
The use of my name, the trust in her voice, shattered my resolve to be “civil.”
“Marcus,” I said calmly.
“Sir?”
“Call the Mayor. Then call the partners at Sterling & Cooper. Tell them to wake up every judge in Cook County.”
I turned to the Sergeant. “You take her out of this room, and I will sue your department into oblivion. I will bury this city in so much litigation the sun won’t shine on City Hall for a decade.”
The Sergeant hesitated. Money talks. In America, money screams.
But the law is a stubborn machine.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thorne,” the Sergeant said, pulling out his handcuffs—not for Lily, but for me, if I moved another inch. “The law is the law. You can fight it in court tomorrow. But tonight, she goes with Henderson.”
One of the officers grabbed Lily’s arm. She screamed, kicking and thrashing.
“No! Dad! Daddy!”
That word. Daddy.
It snapped the last tether of my control. I didn’t care about the law. I didn’t care about my reputation. I lunged at the officer holding her.
“Get your hands off her!”
Chaos erupted.
Chapter 7: The Billionaire in Cell Block D
The taser didn’t hurt as much as the sound of the elevator doors closing.
I was on the marble floor, my muscles seizing, my vision blurring. But the last thing I saw wasn’t the officer standing over me; it was Lily’s face pressed against the closing gap of the elevator, tears streaming down her cheeks, screaming for a father she had just found and immediately lost.
“Dad!”
Ding.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the click of handcuffs ratcheting tight around my wrists.
“Julian Thorne,” the Sergeant panted, holstering his taser. “You are under arrest for assaulting an officer.”
Two hours later, I was sitting in a holding cell at the Cook County Jail.
They took my belt, my shoelaces, and my phone. My tuxedo was torn at the shoulder, stained with alley sludge and sweat. I sat on a steel bench next to a guy coming down off a meth high.
I was worth twelve billion dollars. I could buy this prison and turn it into a parking lot. But in that cell, I was powerless. And for the first time in thirty years, I wasn’t thinking about stock prices or acquisition mergers.
I was thinking about the terror in a ten-year-old girl’s eyes.
“Mr. Thorne?”
The heavy iron door buzzed open. A guard stepped in, looking nervous. Behind him was Elena Russo, my chief legal counsel. She looked like she had sprinted here from a gala, wearing a cocktail dress under her trench coat, clutching a briefcase like a weapon.
“Get him out,” she hissed at the guard. “Now.”
As I walked out of the cell, rubbing my wrists, Elena handed me a wet wipe. “You’re trending on Twitter, Julian. ‘Billionaire Brawls with Cops.’ The board is freaking out. What the hell happened?”
“I found her, Elena,” I said, my voice raspy.
“Found who?”
“My daughter.”
Elena stopped walking. She stared at me. “The one… from Seattle?”
“Yes. And a man named Henderson has her. He’s her foster guardian. I need you to destroy him.”
Elena’s eyes narrowed. She pulled out her phone. “Give me the name. Give me the district.”
“Rick Henderson. Foster system. He locks kids in basements and steals their property. I want a scorched-earth policy, Elena. I want Child Protective Services at his door in ten minutes. I want the best private investigators tearing apart his life. I want an emergency custody hearing by sunrise.”
“Julian, it’s 2:00 AM. Judges are asleep.”
I grabbed her shoulders. I had never touched an employee before. “Then wake them up. Buy the courthouse if you have to. If that little girl spends one more night in that man’s house, I will burn this entire city to the ground.”
Elena saw something in my face she had never seen in ten years of working for me. She saw a father.
“Okay,” she nodded, typing furiously. “The private jet is fueling up to bring the DNA lab techs from Boston. We’ll have a paternity match by breakfast. Go home, shower, and put on a suit. We’re going to war.”
Chapter 8: The Final Lullaby
At 9:00 AM, the sunlight streamed through the windows of the Family Court, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air.
The courtroom was packed. My arrest had drawn the press like sharks to chum. But I didn’t see the cameras. I only saw the door on the left.
When it opened, Henderson walked in, looking smug. He had a cheap lawyer with him.
Then, Lily walked in.
She looked smaller than I remembered. She was wearing the same dirty clothes, her head down. She refused to look at anyone.
“All rise,” the bailiff announced.
The hearing was short. Brutally short.
Elena didn’t just bring a knife to a gunfight; she brought a nuclear warhead. She presented the expedited DNA results: 99.99% Probability of Paternity.
Then, she played a video.
It was footage from my penthouse security system. High-definition audio and video of Henderson admitting he locked the fridge. Admitting he took Sarah’s coat. Admitting he viewed Lily as a paycheck.
The judge, a stern woman with glasses on the end of her nose, watched the screen. Her expression went from bored to furious.
She paused the video and looked over her spectacles at Henderson.
“Mr. Henderson,” the judge said, her voice icy. “Not only am I revoking your foster license effective immediately, but I am also issuing a warrant for your arrest on charges of child endangerment and fraud.”
Henderson sputtered, “But—he assaulted a cop!”
“And Mr. Thorne will face those charges in a separate court,” the judge snapped. “But regarding the custody of Lily Miller…”
She looked at me. Then she looked at Lily.
“Lily?” the judge asked softly. “Do you know who this man is?”
Lily looked up. Her mismatched eyes met mine across the room. I nodded, just once. A promise.
“Yes,” Lily whispered. “He’s the Prince.”
“Excuse me?” the judge asked.
“He’s my dad,” Lily said, louder this time.
“Custody is awarded to Julian Thorne, effective immediately.”
The gavel banged. The sound echoed like a gunshot, killing my old life instantly.
I didn’t wait for the bailiff. I crossed the divider. Lily jumped out of her chair and ran. She hit me with such force I nearly stumbled back. I dropped to my knees, wrapping my arms around her, burying my face in her neck.
She was crying. I was crying. The cameras were flashing, capturing the moment the Ice King finally melted.
Epilogue
Six months later.
The penthouse is different now. The white marble is covered in colorful Persian rugs. There are paintings—messy, vibrant watercolors—drying on the expensive dining table.
I sold the company. Well, I kept a board seat, but I stepped down as CEO. It turns out, you can’t run an empire and help a ten-year-old with math homework at the same time. I chose the homework.
It was a Tuesday night. The wind was howling off Lake Michigan, batting against the glass.
I sat at the Steinway. Lily sat next to me, her feet swinging, not quite touching the floor. She was wearing a new sweater, warm and soft, and her cheeks were full, healthy.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” she smiled.
I played the opening chord.
“Sleep, little ember, the fire is low…”
We sang together.
For years, I thought that song was about a King who left his kingdom to find himself. I was wrong.
It was about a man who had to get lost so he could be found by the only person who knew the tune.
I looked at my daughter, her blue and brown eyes reflecting the city lights. I realized I didn’t need the billions. I didn’t need the applause.
I just needed to finish the song.
“Dad?” she asked as the last note faded.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Mom would have loved this part. The happy ending part.”
I kissed the top of her head, my throat tight.
“Yeah,” I whispered, looking out at the stars that no longer felt so far away. “She’s listening, Lily. She’s been listening the whole time.”